News in Ecumenism

On Tuesday February 9 Cardinal Vincent Nichols will celebrate Vespers in King Henry VIII’s chapel. The Vespers, at Hampton Court Palace’s Chapel Royal, will be celebrated in the Latin Rite and the Anglican Bishop of London will deliver a sermon.

Pope Francis and the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church will meet in Cuba next week in a historic step to heal the 1,000-year-old schism that divided Christianity between East and West, both churches announced Friday. Francis is due to travel to Mexico Feb. 12-18. He will stop in Cuba on the way and meet with Kirill on Feb. 12 at the Havana airport, where they will speak privately for about two hours and then sign a joint declaration, the Vatican said.

Ecumenism is not condemned to disappear from China. Indeed, we can find within the Chinese society and among Chinese Christians a certain number of mediations infusing a path of mutual respect, convergence and relative spiritual communion. Chinese Christians are all aware of sharing the same spiritual filiation and of their duty to better honor Jesus' prayer for his disciples: "they may be one so that the world may believe."

He wants to build on this foundation but his approach is not to debate the finer points of ecclesiology. He instead operates a sort of “personal ecumenism” of encounter and friendship: a strategy that seeks to go round the structures and walls of division. One example of this is his planned visit this October to Lund, in Sweden for a gathering of October Catholic and Lutheran leaders preparing to mark the 500th anniversary of the reformation in 2017.

Declaration after the meeting of Anglican Primates, the senior bishops of the 38 Anglican Provinces, that took place in Canterbury between Monday 11 January and Friday 15 January at the invitation of Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury. We came knowing that the 2016 Primates’ meeting would be concerned with the differences among us in regard to our teaching on matters of human sexuality. We were also eager to address wider areas of concern.

We are not supposed to think of the Church of England as a ‘Church’. When our sovereign was crowned, the Scriptures were placed in her hands with an awesome pronouncement: “We present you with this book, the most valuable thing this world affords.”

Anglican communion avoids schism by banning pro-gay US church for three years. The Archbishop of Canterbury has banned the US Episcopal Church from involvement in the Anglican Communion for three years in an attempt to avoid a general schism. The communion also voted to condemn same-sex marriage as against its teaching.

A new Vatican document has broken theological ground by stating explicitly that Jews can be saved despite not believing in Jesus Christ. A Jewish commentator hails the conclusion as the most significant advance in Christian-Jewish dialogue in half a century.

New wars and ancient feuds. Long-standing rivalries between Moscow and Constantinople – compounded by disagreements over the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria – threaten to derail the most important Orthodox Church gathering of modern times.

This week, the Anglican Communion may fall apart. The stated reason is disagreement about homosexuality. Liberal whites, especially in North America, support gay sex acts and same-sex marriage. African Anglicans oppose them because they go against what the Bible and Christian tradition say.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has called together the 37 most senior figures in the worldwide Anglican Communion to try to head off a potential schism. But serious doubts remain about his chances of persuading them to adopt a new way of working together.

"We are well aware that the recent events and acts of violence which have shaken your country were not grounded in properly religious motives. Those who claim to believe in God must also be men and women of peace. Christians, Muslims and members of the traditional religions have lived together in peace for many years,...

In 1996 the late Cardinal Basil Hume wrote to Tony Blair, then an Anglican and on the verge of becoming Prime Minister, asking him to refrain from taking communion when he attended Mass with his family. Blair, married to a Catholic, reluctantly agreed but in his letter of reply to the cardinal wrote: “I wonder what Jesus would have made of it.”

Despite its brevity, "Nostra Aetate" marks a starting point for dialogue among Christians, Muslims and Jews that must be continued into the future, according to speakers at Jesuit-run and New York-based Fordham University.

When I decided, as an Evangelical Protestant, to become a Catholic it was for a myriad of reasons. The appeal of the ancient tradition, the beauty of the Liturgy, and the succinct, coherent theology are only a few of the compelling aspects that drew me in. There are many more. But what I did not realize, as I began my first tentative steps to cross the Tiber, was how becoming a Catholic would utterly change my Christian life. In ways that I, then, could never have imagined.

The archbishop of Canterbury has just announced a final throw of the dice to keep the family together. He plans a looser structure – not quite a divorce, but “sleeping in separate bedrooms”. It’s the right way forward. But it doesn’t go far enough.The Anglican communion began as the spiritual arm of British colonialism, with public-school soldiers exporting their style of prayer and hat-wearing, hymn-singing church throughout the empire.

The invitation from the Most Rev Justin Welby to the meeting will bring together a number of church heads who have not spoken directly to each other in over a decade. Archbishop Justin Welby said in a statement: “I have suggested to all Primates that we need to consider recent developments but also look afresh at our ways of working as a Communion and especially as Primates, paying proper attention to developments in the past.

Fewer and fewer governments are willing to risk Beijing’s anger by being seen to be on amicable terms with the Dalai Lama. The reincarnation of Tibetan lamas became politicized when in 2007 China’s State of Religious Affairs Bureau issued its Decree No.5, ruling that reincarnations of all tulkus or living Buddhas, were only valid once approved by the state.

The destruction of the monasteries and most of the libraries, music and art of medieval England now looks what it always was – not a religious breakthrough, but a cultural calamity. The slaughtered Popish martyrs look less like an alien fifth column than the voices of a history England was not allowed to have.

For the sake of peace, religious beliefs must never be allowed to be abused in the cause of violence and war. We must be clear and unequivocal in challenging our communities to live fully the tenets of peace and coexistence found in each religion, and to denounce acts of violence when they are committed.”